Minister of domestic trade, cooperatives and consumerism (KPDNKK) Datuk Seri Hamzah Zainuddin said the announcements will be made every Wednesday, with the new weekly prices coming into effect at midnight the following day.

“Following recent discussions with petrol companies, the government has agreed to announce the new prices for petrol and diesel on a weekly basis, every Wednesday,” he said. The prices will be based on global oil market rates.

When the new system was first announced earlier this month, it was reported that fuel retailers will be able to follow the ceiling prices or set them lower. This was reiterated by Hamzah in his announcement of the kickoff date today. “Private companies and petrol station retailers who wish to offer discounts from the fixed prices can do so by getting the approval from the ministry,” he told reporters.

In the earlier report, Hamzah had said that the government is determining the fuel price to avoid it exceeding the correct market price. “In reality, what second finance minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani and I are doing, is to ensure the people know what had been determined by the Petroleum Dealers Association of Malaysia,” he stated.

The idea of setting a fuel ceiling price was first announced in February, with Johari suggesting it as a means to tackle the issue of escalating fuel prices. At that point, the price of RON 95 had been raised two months in a row, effectively up 40 sen compared to December 2016 (RM2.30 vs RM1.90 per litre).

The Petrol Dealers Association of Malaysia (PDAM) was initially unhappy about the move, but later said it welcomed the implementation of the weekly price revisions. It had in the past mooted the idea of a weekly system, saying that the current monthly system could cause fuel retailers to incur heavy losses and that weekly price updates (of smaller fluctuations) would not be “too noticeable” for motorists.

Anthony Lim believes that nothing is better than a good smoke and a car with character, with good handling aspects being top of the prize heap. Having spent more than a decade and a half with an English tabloid daily never being able to grasp the meaning of brevity or being succinct, he wags his tail furiously at the idea of waffling - in greater detail - about cars and all their intrinsic peculiarities here.

No, it won’t. The oil price currently facing downtrend again (even after oil supply cut by the OPEC). It needs even more huge supply cut to make oil price rises again. Do you want to know why the oil price facing downtrend again? US shale oil production. Apparently the US shale oil companies step up their own production, they don’t want to play nice with OPEC decision. MYR is not a banana currency as you claimed. MYR in this kind of state isn’t because of internal forces, but because of outside forces. The biggest outside forces are the devaluing of Yuan, and the strengthening of USD. Our MYR is just fine.

Sorry but the amount of oil our country produce is less than the amount of oil we import. So, Malaysia is technically not oil producing country. Although, the increase in fuel prices is not that favourable for me.

Yes, our country also produces own oil. Malaysia’s crude oil production: 668kbpd. Malaysia’s oil consumption: 800kbpd. We consume oil more than what we produce, hence we are actually a net importer of oil. We import oil from other countries to fulfill our own huge consumption. One more fact, the oil we produce aren’t totally being consumed by us Malaysian. Other countries buy our oil for many purposes (as jet fuel, industrial uses etc). Therefore we have to import oil for our own usage, hence that’s why we have to pay according to the international oil price. Actually, the oil produced in Malaysia also follows the international price, we have no options other than pay what is dictated by the international market.

You can either post as a guest or have an option to register. Among the advantages of registering is once a name has been registered, a guest cannot post using that name. If you have an account, please login before commenting. If you wish to have a profile photo next to your name, register at Gravatar using the same e-mail address you use to comment.